M sur M police station revisited
by AmZ
Summary: The scene as Hugo would never have shown it: without clearly defined villainvictim roles.
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: Les Mis not mine; characters had been liberally messed with.  
  
Note: Being that I currently have very (veeeeeery) limited access to computers, I'll write in sporadic fits, and without paying much attention to elegance of flow and style. Basically, either I write like this or I write nothing at all, and I'd like to get something resembling a story out there. This particular one has been stewing in my head for a good time now.  
  
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"Shut the door behind you, Sergeant. And you, take a seat."  
  
The last words were clearly meant for her and not the pimply youth, who was now latching the door. Fantine took a couple of shaky steps forward and lowered herself onto the rickety chair that stood in front of the inspector's desk. All in all, this adventure didn't look good for her, but at least she'd get to spend a while in the heated office. It was even warmer here than in the pub: the merrily burning fire had heated the stove a brilliant white-orange, and one heard brief, violent hisses whenever snow clumps from Javert's coat fell onto its iron grates.  
  
Javert, who had sat down to his desk immediately after they arrived, seemed completely absorbed in his writing. Fantine looked on curiously. Having never mastered writing herself, she couldn't help but be slightly awed by the speed at which the inspector's pen flew over paper. The man never even went back over the written to cross out a word or pour some blotting sand over a mismark: words flowed onto the page without pause or blemish, like patterns woven by a Jacquard loom.  
  
After signing his name with a flourish to the last sheet directly in front of him, Javert moved all three to the top of a growing pile next to his left elbow and finally turned towards his captive.  
  
"Well?"  
  
Fantine, who was starting to fall into a slumber on account of the warmth, shuddered at the sudden call and looked at the man sitting in front of her.  
  
"Monsieur?" she heard herself lisp meekly.  
  
Javert rolled his eyes humorlessly.  
  
"Oh, don't be coy with me, you silly tart. We are not that freshly acquainted."  
  
Fantine felt her chapped lips stretch into a weak smile.  
  
"Whatever you say, Monsieur. Did you ask me something?"  
  
Javert nodded and slowly tapped his pen on the desk.  
  
"Have you got anything at all to say in your defence?" he inquired sarcastically.  
  
Fantine shrugged. "He started it, Monsieur Javert, you've done seen so yourself."  
  
"I haven't, but yes, several witnesses did inform me. But pay attention. I'm not asking why you got angry at the gentleman. I'm asking why you had to vent your anger by pummelling him. And don't tell me fibs that he started that too."  
  
Javert put so much loathing into the word "gentleman" that Fantine couldn't help but smile. The inspector obviously didn't think much of idlers regardless of their place on the social ladder. Nevertheless, there was nothing more to say, and so she simply repeated:  
  
"He started it."  
  
Javert nodded again, then heaved a deep, theatrical sigh and rubbed his right temple.  
  
"Sergeant, leave us alone for a minute," he said, fixing his grey eyes on a point in space somewhere above Fantine's bare shoulder. "Go make yourself useful outside and disperse the crowd."  
  
The youth nodded with sad resignation and once again began to unlatch the front door that had taken him so long to shut.  
  
According to municipal regulations, the door was supposed to have two well- oiled latches, but one of them had long ago rusted over entirely, and the remaining one was so bent that it always took a full three minutes to get it either into or out of the socket. This made opening and shutting the front door labors worthy of both Sisyphus and Heracles. Needless to say, the frustrating chore was always relegated to the poor sergeant, on account of his being the youngest and the lowest of rank.  
  
Javert observed his young subordinate's struggle against the latch with a sadistic smirk. Ordering the kid around was one of the very few guilty pleasures this provincial hole of a town provided for him.  
  
"Up to your old tricks again I see, Fantine," he murmured, once the sergeant had pulled the door firmly shut behind him.  
  
Fantine couldn't help but notice that since the last time they had spoken, the inspector's face has become even more tired, that the creases around his mouth had deepened, and that his eyelids were slightly swollen and did not open fully when he spoke. Something in his tired and sickly expression struck Fantine as eerily familiar.  
  
"I take it my last lecture fell upon deaf ears as well." Javert sounded the same as he looked: exhausted. "You've been drinking and brawling again. I should not be surprised, but I am. I really thought something would come out of our last conversation. You sounded so earnest."  
  
Shamed by his words, Fantine looked down at her small, red hands lying folded on her lap. Javert stood up and took a few unhurried steps from his desk to the visitor's chair. When Fantine looked up again, the inspector's tall figure was looming right above her, an ominous black apparition bathed in the stove's orange glow. Javert looked like a lieutenant out of some elite demonic regiment, just emerged from a portal to Hades and ready to plunge back into it again with the soul of a sinner in his pitiless grasp. Fantine tried to swallow around the dry ball forming in her throat. Javert's grey eyes held her fast, like steel cables.  
  
"You lied to me again."  
  
Cold, official, and not subject to appeal, like the signature on a death warrant. Fantine felt her eyes mist over with tears.  
  
"I didn't mean to, honest to God, Monsieur."  
  
"You didn't mean to."  
  
For some reason, that half-question jolted something in Fantine's memory: she suddenly recalled why the inspector's expression looked so familiar. Cecile used to stare at things just like that before she'd done herself in, thought Fantine, only she was also thin as a rake, every rib showing. And her eyes were always red and swollen, just like his. That last week she even stopped going home, just sat for hours out on the sidewalk outside the corner apothecary, legs folded under, staring into her own lap like there was something in it precious to her and invisible to the rest of us. And then one day she was gone, and none of the girls could find her again, until we all went back to her place and there she was, face down on her bed, right hand clenching tightly around a little brown bottle.. ..  
  
"Ss-s-so. So so so," murmured Javert, more to himself than to Fantine. His fingers drummed out a little march on the table behind him. "So that's how things stand with us, I see." Javert raised his eyebrows. "Let's hear more," he exclaimed in an unnaturally merry voice and did something entirely peculiar: hopped onto his desk, landing on a clear space between papers and books, and sat there dangling his long legs, like a schoolboy during recess.  
  
"Monsieur?" said Fantine, utterly confused by both the inspector's strange behavior and the sudden change in his mood.  
  
Javert nodded forcefully in her direction, clearly urging her to speak on. A wave would have perhaps been more appropriate a gesture, but both of Javert's hands were shoved so deeply into his coat pockets that he resembled a manic Bicetre patient, tied up for misbehavior.  
  
"Let's hear more about this. I love fairytales! Tell me more about how you meant to follow my orders but something once again deterred you. I'm all ears."  
  
Fantine lowered her eyes again, but this time they were dry. He is mocking me, she thought with dry fury. What would he know about life on the streets, look at how posh he's got it, probably eats veal cutlets for supper every day and gets his washing done upstream, the cad.  
  
"I spoke with Widow Doris, you know," continued Javert in the same light- hearted tone and still dangling his legs, but now with his eyes trained on the door. "She told me that you had not approached her to ask for a place in her establishment. In fact, she informed me, in that obnoxiously high- pitched nasal manner of hers, that 'the po-o-oor de-e-ear has not been by at all, but not at a-aall! Not even to visit with her girlfriends!'" Javert mimicked and raised a very black eyebrow at his captive. "Explain."  
  
Fantine remained silent. How does a girl explain to a man, and one almost twice her age, that she'd rather walk the cold streets than work in a merry public house, because the girls working there are too pretty? And they were all so pretty.. .. So plump and rosy, with elegant wrists and merry dimples on their cheeks.. .. How could she hope to earn anything when they were around? Who would pick a withered, coughing, toothless whore when he could have one glowing with health?  
  
"No answer? Then let us move on to the matter of your mandatory check-up."  
  
Still facing Fantine, Javert reached behind him and groped blindly through the pile of papers. Finally, he turned back fully holding a handsome, thin folder of brown leather with side-stitching of thick black thread. Fantine almost jumped when the inspector casually tossed the folder into her lap. For a moment she stared at it dumbly, then looked up again.  
  
"Flip through it and tell me if you notice any sheets of paper with your name on them," said Javert blandly and turned his head towards the door with a slight frown.  
  
Careful not to leave smudges of snow and mud, Fantine opened the folder and looked over the neatly stitched together sheets. Each one held on top the name of a prostitute registered with the municipality (a few of the names rang familiar, most of them did not) and on the bottom, the rectangular black seal of the municipal police and also a round violet stamp that Fantine did not recognise.  
  
"Well?" asked Javert somewhat distractedly. He was still watching the door.  
  
"No, sir."  
  
Javert finally turned his head back.  
  
"'No sir' what?"  
  
"There are no sheets with my name."  
  
"A-hah! Now we are off and rolling. Do you know why there are no sheets here with your name on them?"  
  
"Because I have not registered with the police."  
  
Javert raised his eyebrows so high that they altogether disappeared underneath the hair that fell thickly over his forehead.  
  
"And yet here we are, chatting away like a couple of old pals! Why is it do you think that I am aware of your existence, have full knowledge of your profession, and yet have not included you with others belonging to your sisterhood?"  
  
"Because I.. .. I haven't gone.. .."  
  
"Speak up, you hussy, I don't read lips!"  
  
"Because I haven't gone to the doctor!" shouted Fantine, eyes dripping tears.  
  
"Why not?" Metallic notes clanged in Javert's voice.  
  
"I.. .. I.. .." This was too much for Fantine and she started to sob. 


	2. Chapter 2

Someone knocked. Javert turned his head away from the sobbing woman in front of him and, narrowing his eyes, peered into the grated window in the upper part of the door. It was the sergeant. Javert fought down the urge to growl. At least in Paris he'd had a decent interrogation room, with proper locks and a stairway, where private conversations remained private, and no one disturbed him and his... what was it Isaac used to call them? Interlocutors.  
  
"Her...Come in!"  
  
Javert winced at the sound of his own voice. 'And if thy tongue offend thee,' he thought, utterly annoyed with himself, 'cut it off and cast it from thee: it is better for thee to walk around this city dumb than to risk undue questions about why the hell you call out to people in German.'  
  
The door opened and admitted the pimply sergeant, now slightly disheveled, with his cheeks red from the cold and snow clumps in his straw-blonde hair.  
  
"I think they're all gone now, sir. I told them over and over but they just wouldn't go, sir, but I think they're all gone for good, sir," rattled off the youth in a single breath and attempted to click his heels. However, due to the thick layer of wet snow on them, his boots made no sound. What they did make was a rather unsightly pile of slush on the floor.  
  
"Good job," graciously offered Javert.  
  
"Awaiting further orders, sir," declared the youth, straightening out his back and puffing out his chest.  
  
'Take a glass of warm milk and go take a nap,' Javert almost blurted out, biting back his treacherous tongue at the last moment. Instead he said:  
  
"Go down to the cells and make a thorough inspection of the stove in each one. Note the disrepairs, should you find any, on a sheet of paper, then bring the sheet back to me. Here," he added, rummaging once again blindly behind him and tossing the sergeant a thoroughly chewed-up pencil stub. The sergeant looked at it doubtfully, then at Fantine, who was still sniffling pitifully on her chair, then back at the pencil.  
  
"Did you hear me all right, Sergeant? Off you go!" barked Javert and watched the kid scurry off down into the basement.  
  
Once again they were alone, and only Fantine's whimpers and the crackling of the stove broke the silence. Javert observed the woman for a few seconds, then pulled a large, monogrammed handkerchief out of the left pocket of his coat.  
  
"Here, dry yourself off," he grumbled.  
  
Mechanically, Fantine took a hold of the handkerchief and dabbed her red eyes with it.  
  
"I'm afraid this has gone too far now for me to be lenient."  
  
Fantine's fearful, tearing eyes followed Javert as he leapt off his desk and sat behind it in the proper fashion.  
  
"You simply leave me with no choice," he murmured, opening the lowest drawer of the desk, peering briefly inside, then closing it and opening the one directly above it. "Aha, there we are," he said and pulled out a stack of slightly yellowed forms bearing ominous black municipality seals. Extracting one, he laid the rest back into the drawer and pushed it into the table. The drawer shut with a loud click that reminded Fantine of a pistol being cocked.  
  
Picking up his pen, Javert paused and once again looked Fantine directly in the eyes.  
  
"I know there's much flowery talk of mercy and compassion and whatnot going around these days, and I am not entirely averse to the idea," he said. "But as it often happens, the people who speak most ardently on the subject of crime are the ones least acquainted with it. Their idea of a criminal is their old scullery maid who used to pinch oysters from the kitchen. As for me, I have been with the police, in one way or another, some two and a half decades now. I have come to realize something so important and so simple, that the salon public can never hope to understand it. To save a drowning man, it is not enough to simply extend your hand to him. He must also grasp that hand in return."  
  
The pen was dipped into the inkwell.  
  
"You will have six months for it." 


	3. Chapter 3

"Six months..." repeated Fantine quietly. Then, as the meaning of those words struck her full on, she startled violently and almost fell from her chair.  
  
"Six months!" she screamed with powerless fury. Sharp spots of color rose in her pallid cheeks; a few weak gasps escaped her throat, as if she were short of air.   
  
And then the dam burst.  
  
"Half an entire year in prison, for a brawl that I didn't even start? You heartless bloody fiend, tread all over me if you like, but have pity on my daughter! What's she done to you that you condemn her to freeze in the streets? Who's going to pay those evil peasants for her keeping if I'm away in a prison for six months? You, copper? Are you going to feed her and clothe her and pay for her medicines? I owe them one hundred francs, do you know that? Why do you think I've not gone to the public house? I can't make enough money in the public house, no one will buy me there, they have prettier girls, healthier girls! You think I enjoy walking in the cold without a shawl, with fellows throwing snowballs at me and tripping me on the sidewalk? You think I like what I do? You think I'm merrymaking when I drink brandy and brawl?!"  
  
A violent coughing fit interrupted her, and she bent double in her chair, struggling to regain her breath and keep from retching. Javert looked on without saying a word. Breathing heavily, Fantine pulled Javert's monogrammed handkerchief away from her mouth. It came back full of vile greyish-green mucus and covered in bright red spots of blood.  
  
"I'm sorry... I didn't mean to spoil it with blood... there's usually no blood... I'm so sorry..." She spoke softly now, with her head hanging low.  
  
"Does it hurt your stomach to cough like this?" asked Javert calmly, after a moments's reflection.  
  
"No," said Fantine, shaking her head. "It doesn't. Burns a little in the chest though. And the shoulder, the left one. I'm really sorry. I didn't mean to say all those mean things. I just... oh, it's just so hard... I know I've done bad, but what else could I do? The prison contractors pay so little, only nine sous a day, and my eyes are not so good anymore, to work without a candle at night..."  
  
Javert stood up and took a few slow, hesitating steps towards Fantine. He looked slightly unsettled, as if he couldn't decide what to do next. After standing still for a few long moments, he sighed and started to unbutton his coat, glancing occasionally at the soiled handkerchief in Fantine's hands. Once the last button was undone, he dropped his coat over the back of his chair, looked towards the stove, where a washbasin stood full of water, took a deep breath and stretched out his hand.  
  
"Give it here."  
  
Fantine frowned but complied. Javert grasped the rag by two clean corners, carried it over to his desk, laid it flat onto a sheet of paper and began to study its foul contents. Fantine watched him, confused and not a little disgusted.  
  
It did not take Javert long to conclude his inspection. He picked up the handkerchief by the same two corners, folded it, and threw it back into Fantine's lap.  
  
"Unpleasant, but not unexpected," he murmured, crumpling up the sheet of paper and throwing it into the stove. "And you saw the doctor for this cough, you said?" he asked, turning his back to Fantine and washing his hands thoroughly in the basin.  
  
"Yes, a few days ago. He was nice, told me to be good and take care of myself. Wait a moment, when did I say this?"  
  
"Just now," said Javert. Fantine thought she could almost hear him grinning over the splashing water. "So tell me then, if you are not afraid of doctors, why didn't you go see one when I ordered it two months ago?"  
  
Fantine turned pink and turned her eyes away.  
  
"It's not the same. I didn't mind this one. He only held my wrist a little. He didn't look... down there."  
  
Javert's back went still.  
  
"Are you meaning to tell me you didn't get your venereal check-up out of some sort of perverse modesty?" he exclaimed, slowly turning to face Fantine and shaking water droplets off his hands.  
  
Fantine shrugged a little and blushed again. Javert realized that what he had blurted out was true and blinked a few times in amazement.  
  
"Woman, are you insane? Don't you think such feelings are a little misplaced considering your current occupation?"  
  
"I always extinguish the candle with the others," whispered Fantine. "They don't ever see nothing."  
  
Overwhelmed by the shame of having to speak about such intimate things with a policeman, she hid her face in her hands. 


	4. Chapter 4

"Unbelievable," said Javert, shaking his head. "And they ask me why I never married! You women are crazy, that's why! So, some first-comer from the street doesn't make you uncomfortable, but a health officer does? Unbelievable."

Fantine simply tucked her head deeper into her shoulders, desperately hoping that the earth would just open up and swallow her.

A few raised voices became audible outside: an escalating quarrel.

"Blood and thunder, what now?" With a murderous glint in his eyes, Javert grabbed the rattan propped against the desk, crossed the room in three long strides, and threw open the door. The abused door hinges emitted a piteous squeak. Three young men in uniform stood ankle-deep in virginally white snow a few paces away from the station threshold with their heads turned towards the sound. Javert's sudden appearance had caught two of them in an awkward sort of half-embrace and the third one with his hands flat on both their chests. All three were red-faced, out of breath, and dishevelled.

Javert unhurriedly looked over the flustered trio. "I hope I'm not interrupting anything... personal..." he drawled finally with an evil leer, lazily tapping his cane against a tall black boot. "Seeing how officers of peace are oath-bound to keep peace between themselves as well as between other citizens, I would be terribly, *terribly* disappointed to find any of them having a row under my windows. Well?"

The two fellows that stood with their arms intertwined untangled themselves reluctantly; two sets of cold and hateful eyes promised each other another time and place.

"In the future, take better care to conduct yourselves in a manner appropriate to your station," said Javert, who did not miss this silent exchange between his subordinates. "If I witness any more such school-boy scenes, rest assured I will take on the temporary role of the school-master and break a few switches against your hides. Latour, your shift is not for another hour - we will chat then. You are dismissed. Amiot, Rocher, come with me."

He turned on his heels and walked back inside. One of the quarrellers, a tall lanky blond, stayed where he was; the others followed Javert.

"You are in luck today," announced Javert, as he latched the door behind his now sheepish lieutenants. "There is so much paperwork hanging on us that I shall deny myself the joy of scolding you." Both men were handed tall piles of bound texts and loose documents and directed to two writing stations set up at the desk. "Get to work."

Then he turned to Fantine and said, "And we are going to continue our little discussion downstairs. Sergeant, escort her down to cell 2A. I will follow you shortly."

The youthful sergeant, who was just coming up the stairs clutching the sheet with the requested notes on jailcell stoves and the noted disrepairs thereof, nodded and turned right back around, this time with a hapless, unresisting Fantine in tow. The lieutenants bent their heads low over their writing to conceal knowing smirks.

"I will ask you to keep perfectly quiet while I'm gone - move your leg, Amiot," ordered Javert, opening and slamming shut the drawers of his desk irately. Then, having suddenly remembered, he pulled out from under his shirtsleeves a small bronze key that hung around his neck on a silk cord and unlocked quickly the heavy bottom drawer of the desk. There was not much inside, just a notebook with a worn blue cover and a couple of books. Javert pulled out the notebook and locked the drawer back up.

"God have mercy on your souls if I hear even a peep from above while I'm working," he murmured, tucking the key gingerly back under his shirt like a baptismal cross.

"Will be done, sir. Work comes first, I agree," nodded one of the lieutenants with a perfectly straight and serious mien. His colleague tittered and bit his lip.

Javert turned his head and aimed his leaden, soul-sucking gaze directly into Amiot's pupils.

"I hope you do, Amiot," murmured Javert almost kindly, holding the young man in place with his eyes like a cobra. "I hope you do. And to you, Rocher, I would suggest following your comrade's facetious, but useful advice and nurturing your interest in work rather than in the personal affairs of your superiors. Have a pleasant time, gentlemen."

With that, Javert stood up to his full height, yanked his coat from the back of his chair, and descended quickly into the darkness of the cellar. Lieutenant Amiot wiped the cold sweat off his brow and hid his badly shaking hands under the table. His friend clenched his teeth and scribbled on furiously, pretending to be oblivious.


	5. Chapter 5

Author's Note: If this reads a bit differently than usual, you can blame James Joyce. I have been studiously re-reading "Ulysses" for the past couple of weeks.  
  
===========================================================  
  
"That'll do, Sergeant," murmured Javert, rustling with the sheets of his notebook and making small notes here and there. "It's going, I can hear it."  
  
The young man, his cheeks puffed out to blow into the stove again, breathed out softly and laid back down the two resin-tipped kindling sticks he was about to add to the small pyre. Fantine watched him from the narrow metal bed, shivering. He smiled a crooked, mirthless smile at her thin and uncomely form, ashamed of her and ashamed of himself for feeling ashamed. Not her fault after all. Hunger. Destitution. Probably an orphan too, homeless and hearthless.   
  
"Finish up and come out into the hallway with me for a quick moment," rumbled a deep, knowing baritone right into him, tickling his ear with warm breath. With a sudden tightening in his belly, the young man stood up, closed the grate (taking care not to jar it too much, lest it fall out of the top hinge again), gave the unsmiling miss on the bed a guilty little nod of goodbyefornow, and followed his captain into the draughty corridor.   
  
He was half-anticipating a rebuke for making eyes at the detained lady, but heard something else instead.  
  
"Go back upstairs now and keep an eye on the fellows. The text is on the desk, where Amiot is now sitting. I want you to have the next chapter read by the time I'm back. If Latour shows his face before his shift again, make it plain to him that he'd be best off not stirring up trouble while I'm on the premises. Understood? Good lad. Now," continued Javert in a slightly more relaxed tone, "until I come back up, I don't want to hear a peep from you lot. No singing of arias, no dancing of the cotillion. I want absolute quiet. Do not come to see me if you have questions. You are permitted to seek me out in case of emergencies, but even so, don't do it. If I see you down here, it better be something good. The Savior has returned ahead of schedule and turned the town water supply into absinthe; swarms of devils with red-hot pitchforks are chasing elderly matrons up and down the mainstreet; there is a lightningstorm and it's raining gunpowder; Monsieur the Mayor has been cursed by Gypsies into a brown toad with warts. Unless you have news of this sort of proportions, don't show yourself and don't let anyone else come down either. Am I making myself clear?"  
  
"Plain as grass, sir," answered the sergeant, fixing his eyes glumly on the gleaming bronze top button of Javert's stiff collar.  
  
"You are not pleased with something. What is it?" demanded Javert.  
  
Strained pause and ominous crackling of wall torches. They've seen that much and worse. Shall I answer him straight?  
  
"Sir, I don't mean to question your integrity, sir..." But he couldn't continue. His tongue simply wouldn't turn to make the shaming accusation to such a perfect officer, and to his face no less. The sergeant took a deep breath to collect himself, lifted his eyes bravely to meet the captain's, and saw that the gray gaze measuring him was not unkind.  
  
"At ease, sergeant," said Javert, with a crooked smirk. "Rest assured that my intentions towards the prisoner are not contrary to any prescribed procedures. I give you my word as a man and an officer of the law."  
  
"Sir, I apologize, I shouldn't have..." Sheen of shamed sweat on the brow.  
  
"No apologies. You are right to be suspicious." Javert sighed and shook his head slightly. "It would be a grave mistake to assume that everyone who stands above you on the social ladder is your moral superior, or even your equal. Most often it is just the other way around. A cad can squirm into many a high place, all that's needed is money, connections... or fraud."   
  
Javert's tones became chillier and chillier; now he was speaking almost through his teeth. His eyes squinted intently at some unknown point on the opposite wall; the left corner of his thin mouth started to crawl slowly downwards and sideways, exposing large, yellowish teeth. The sergeant felt his skin crawl at the sight. Only the rational realization that the captain's silent fury couldn't possibly be addressed at him kept him from bolting.  
  
Catching himself, Javert closed his eyes for a brief moment, squeezed his jaws shut, then unlocked them again. The tension on his face dissolved, leaving weariness in its stead. "No one is infallible, kid," he said softly and bitterly. "Man is a weak, nasty, brutish beast, and coming into money rarely improves his moral character. Ever less so with positions of public trust. Consider this a lesson for the future. Now run upstairs and don't worry about the lady. What's left of her honor is quite safe with me." 


	6. Chapter 6

The next quarter of an hour was spent in cozy, stove-warmed silence. 

After ordering the sergeant back upstairs, Javert pulled the outside shutter - there were none on the inside - all the way across the tiny cross- barred opening in the upper part of the massive cell door and shut the door itself firmly. The happenings inside were now rendered invisible to the rest of the world. Then, his nose still buried in his notebook, Javert groped with his foot for the state-issued cell chair, a rickety low-backed affair with rotting wickerwork and crooked legs, moved it with a light kick into the corner directly across from the stove, and sat down onto it with the air of a diligent law student cramming for end of the year orals.

For some time, Javert did not stir at all, except to flip a page or to make an occasional mark in the margins with a chewed-up pencil. At first Fantine watched him with interest; then with confusion; then with boredom; finally, she turned her head altogether away from him and observed instead the orange flames dancing merrily behind the narrow slits of the stove door. To the devil with him, she thought drowsily. Let him stay here and read if he's got nothing better to do.

But eventually female curiosity won out over fatigue, and Fantine began watching her captor once again, but this time in secret, through half-shut eyelashes.

Javert seemed completely absorbed in his reading. The pencil he was now holding in his mouth; from time to time his massive lower jaw made lazy side-to-side motions, rotating the stub mechanically in the firm grip of the molars.

Four years now he's been here, thought Fantine. Had almost no grey hair when he arrived, just a bit at the temples, and now look at him. Shame, really; a plain horsetail in place of all those shiny black locks... Losing weight too. Any skinnier and he won't be a man any more, he'll be a walking lamppost.

Seated, the inspector really did seem uncommonly gangly. To position himself on the prison chair, which was far too low for his long legs, Javert had to fold his body into three, curve his spine into a question mark, and bring his knees almost to level with his chest. The pose looked outstandingly awkward. Fantine felt a twinge of pity tug at her heart. Earlier in the office, she had heard Javert curse under his breath as he stood up from that desk of his, trying to stretch out as inconspicuously as possible his back and legs. Perhaps that's why he decided to sit on the desk instead of behind it to speak with me, mused Fantine.

As if to confirm her suspicions, the inspector leaned back into the curved back of the chair as far as his height permitted, took a short moment to stretch out his sides, then crossed one long leg over the other with a slight grimace of discomfort.

Slightly colouring from her own boldness, Fantine let her gaze wander over him, from the square tip of a brilliantly shined black boot to the hint of bare neck above the buttoned-up collar. Javert's head was bent over his reading; there was a slight frown on his face, as if something in the text perplexed him. His long hair was held back with a metal clasp, but a few thin, greying strands escaped the queue and hung down along his right cheek, which was sunken-in and already slightly bluish from the evening stubble.

"Mademoiselle, would you kindly dress me back up again? I'm getting chilled," Javert suddenly spoke up, without lifting his eyes from the notebook. The pencil fell from his teeth and rolled into the groove between the pages.

Horrified beyond words, Fantine blushed furiously and immediately lowered her gaze to the unswept dirt floor. To his credit, Javert did not seem inclined to humiliate her further but only shook his head with mock exasperation: women!..

But it was as if Fantine's scrutiny had taken away his desire to continue reading: he flapped the notebook shut around the pencil and tossed both onto the nominal "pillow" end of the prison bed - towards the wall decorated by a large, plain wooden crucifix.

"I apologize for leaving you temporarily unentertained. I had to re- acquaint myself with a few... well, let us call them a few procedures," said Javert, as he rose slowly from his uncomfortable seat and stretched like a huge, sleepy cat, laying his palms flat onto the prison ceiling and bending slightly backwards.

Still too embarrassed to look at him after getting caught with her eyes roaming, even if it was just curiosity, that's all, not Christ forbid lust or anything like that, Fantine stared at the floor and wondered what sort of "procedures" he could mean, when all the necessary paperwork has already been filled out.

"How is your chest-ache?" Javert asked her suddenly in a softer, kinder tone.

Fantine shrugged. "No better or worse than before, monsieur."

A few long, uncomfortable moments passed. Javert remained silent. Feeling for some reason apprehensive, Fantine finally made herself look up at Javert's face and was unpleasantly startled. The inspector did not look his usual proper self. His head was bowed, as if in penitence, his back was slightly bent, and his teeth worried his lower lip. Just as Fantine opened her mouth to ask what was wrong, his gloomy grey eyes suddenly locked with her own, and he spoke up again, this time haltingly and without the previous assurance in his voice:

"I can't promise you anything. I haven't done this for a good half a decade. Who knows if I can even manage..? And the blokes could start making a row above us... But I think... I think it will be all right. Yes... It will be all right. Pull down your dress."


	7. Chapter 7

When the meaning of what Javert said had finally sunk in, Fantine surmised that warmth and fatigue must have put her to sleep, and that Javert's strange words signified the beginning of her descent into an elaborate nightmare.  
  
"Pardon, Monsieur?" she felt rather than heard her dry, cracked lips say.  
  
Javert's head jerked nervously, as if every muscle on the right side of his neck was momentarily overcome by a mild galvanic shock.  
  
"I said, pull down your dress. And be quick about it. I don't have all day," he repeated, now sounding like his old confident self.  
  
He turned away from the stunned woman, shrugged off in one fluent motion the overcoat that was draped over his shoulders, and threw it over the chair. The chair disappeared under the heavy folds of lead grey wool.  
  
Fantine's benumbed mind took a momentary detour in time and space and found itself under the poplars of Jardin de Tivoli, where on bright Saturday mornings many years ago she and her friends used to watch a sorcerer amuse the bourgeoisie with magic tricks. The memory then morphed into an absurd desire to lift a corner of Javert's overcoat and see whether the chair was still in place underneath or whether it had perhaps changed into a cage with fat white pigeons.  
  
"Bloody hell, woman, what did I just say? Jump to it!"  
  
The hoarse oath snapped Fantine out of her reverie. Slowly, she reached behind and began to untie the back-straps of her gown.  
  
She felt slightly faint and more than slightly nauseated. It wasn't quite that she feared the indignity or the pain of what was about to happen. Both pain and indignity had been her travelling companions on the road of life for so long that she could no longer imagine any personal relation without them. What truly shocked her was something else, something of which she herself had not been previously aware. Up until that point, Javert was the only man in her crumbling world that, despite his ill temper, made her want to believe in the existence of things like wholesomeness, honor, and decency - wonderful things that she herself had lost sight of a long time ago. Now that this last bulwark of hope was revealed to be a chimera, Fantine felt bereaved. What was about to unfold felt so cold, so overwhelming, and so utterly unexpected, that Fantine found herself unable to even express it in coherent thought: in response to Javert's impatient order to undress, her distressed mind produced only the mental equivalent of a pitiful sob.  
  
The last hook was now undone, and the cool, damp silk of the flimsy dress pooled around Fantine's ankles. Javert was still facing away from her; his back muscles jerked slightly as he rolled up carefully the sleeves of his crisply starched white undershirt. Doesn't like to watch, thought Fantine mechanically. Her stomach was turning from revulsion.  
  
All preparations seemingly finished, Javert turned back around to face his prisoner.  
  
"Ey-heh-hey, that's quite enough," he exclaimed, noticing that the dispirited woman was making to remove her petticoats.  
  
Fantine froze but did not lower her hands from the garment. Deciding that she must have heard wrong, she moved to undress fully once again.  
  
Javert rolled his eyes and stomped his foot with impatience. "Will you listen to me? Let those damn things alone and come over here!"  
  
Not knowing what to think anymore, Fantine obeyed the stern command.  
  
"And stand up straight!" snapped Javert, sounding rather like a provincial schoolmaster scolding an unruly pupil. When Fantine didn't react with sufficient swiftness, he grasped her shoulders rudely and pulled upwards, straightening out her back. Not wanting to look at him anymore, Fantine shut her eyes tightly enough to make her eyelids hurt and prayed that the bastard would just get it over with.  
  
She felt Javert's hand positioning itself above her left breast. The hand was large and perversely warm. It shouldn't be so warm, she thought bitterly. It should be cold and hard and...  
  
"Say 'ninety-five.'"  
  
Fantine's eyes snapped wide open.  
  
No, she was not hallucinating. She was still half-nude in a municipal jail cell; Inspector Javert was still standing right in front of her; and the palm of his left hand was still lying flat on her chest. Javert's eyes were focused on a point in space somewhere above her head; he looked anxious and impatient.  
  
"Pardon, monsieur?" asked Fantine once again, feeling stupid.  
  
"Pardieu, would you stop playing the fool and just obey me for once?" growled Javert, shifting his cold, sharp eyes back to the woman's frightened face. "Say 'ninety-five.' Now!"  
  
"Ninety-five," said Fantine in a small voice. Her head was spinning.  
  
"Louder!" barked Javert.  
  
"Ninety-five!"  
  
Javert moved his hand more to the right and pressed down firmly just above her other breast.  
  
"Again."  
  
"Ninety-five."  
  
Javert bit down on his lip with a thoughtful air and took his hand away. Bizarrely, the very next thing he did was retrieve from the bed his leather notebook, open it on the page where he laid the pencil, and hurriedly begin jotting something down.  
  
"Now turn around," he ordered brusquely without stopping his scribbling.  
  
Deciding not to argue with a madman, Fantine turned her back to him.  
  
"No, that won't do," she heard his exasperated baritone behind her. Large, wiry hands covered her own and plucked them from her elbows, which she was gripping in fear. "Fold your arms across your chest, like this," said Javert softer now, crossing Fantine's arms over her breasts, palms flat, so that the fingertips of each hand touched the opposite shoulder. "And keep them like that."  
  
"What is all this for?" finally managed to squeeze out Fantine, whose boundless hurt was starting to give way to similarly boundless confusion.  
  
"It wouldn't do you any good to know," said Javert.  
  
"But no, I do want to know," insisted Fantine and turned her head over her shoulder to look Javert right in the unblinking, unreadable grey eye.  
  
Javert raised his eyebrows slightly and shrugged his left shoulder. "Very well. This is the optimal pose to ensure sufficient outward displacement of the scapulae most appropriate for dorsal examinations," he said with a hint of smugness.  
  
Fantine's face must have been a sight, because the inspector suddenly coughed out a low-pitched, hoarse sound that in a normal person would have been a laugh.  
  
"Oh, come now, I did warn you. Didn't I tell you that it wouldn't do you any good to know?" he said almost playfully. "Now look ahead and relax. Don't worry. This won't hurt, I promise." 


	8. Chapter 8

Author's Note: Just a quickie, before I have to relinquish the computer.  
  
******************************************************************  
  
It didn't hurt. At least he hadn't lied about that.  
  
Javert must've felt her sigh, because his fingers momentarily stopped tapping out their queer march on her back.  
  
"Be patient. I'm almost done," he said, then moved his right hand a couple of inches lower and started up tapping with his left hand again.  
  
The low, hoarse murmur resounded through Fantine in shallow waves and settled warmly in her stomach, like honeyed pipe-smoke from the officers' cafe. A mesmerist would pay a fortune for a voice like that, mused Fantine as hard two-finger taps continued to echo inside her frail chest. He could put people to sleep better than opium. My God, but that bed is looking good... whether or not the crazy bugger is planning to share it.  
  
Then again, she thought bitterly, when was the last time any of them stayed for the night after playing? Where's the pleasure in cuddling up with a bag of bones that occasionally tries to cough up a lung on you?  
  
The warm hands were gone from her skin. "Now put your arms down and turn around to face me again."  
  
Her back tingling and itching, Fantine complied.  
  
Without his huge overcoat on, Javert looked like an entirely different person. The air of authority vanished along with the illusion of bulk; all that was now left of "Inspector Javert" was a very tall, swarthy, reedy fellow, with a long queue of prematurely greying hair and mobile eyes that grasped and released as firmly and abruptly as a pair of pincers. The rolled up sleeves of his crisply starched undershirt glowed a pretty orange in the stove-light. Long, thin arms folded on his chest, Javert scrutinized Fantine's body with the vexed look of a sculptor disappointed in his new model.  
  
"What's the matter, Chief, you don't like them?" Fantine said acridly. It was probably unwise to take such a tone with the man who was at the moment in full control of her life, but she was too tired and too angry to care.  
  
"Not at all, to be frank," said Javert dryly. His deep, rumbling voice was the only thing that reminded Fantine of the man who arrested her just a short hour ago.  
  
"Then perhaps you should have arrested some other whore, one more pleasing to the eye," retorted Fantine.  
  
Javert opened his mouth to say something but then shut it again, exhaling a dejected sigh instead of words.  
  
"I'll be back in a minute," he said, after a quiet moment, picked up his coat from the chair, and threw it on over his shoulders, without bothering with the sleeves. "Don't get dressed yet."  
  
"Whatever you say, Chief," said Fantine bitterly, sitting down onto the bed heavily.  
  
"And don't call me 'Chief!'" said Javert, pushing the door open with an irate kick and stepping out to fiddle with the outside bolt. "Every time I arrest someone, it's 'Chief' this, 'Chief' that... What am I, Ali Baba? When I find out the author of this sobriquet, I'll show him where..."  
  
He had left the door only half-shut; his voice and the sound of his steps echoed farther and farther down the stone hallway, until his words became an indiscernible murmur, drowned by the rhythmic clicking of his boots. Fantine sat up on the bed all the way, hugged her knees to her chest, and let her burning forehead rest on her arms. 


	9. Chapter 9

"... outfitted everyone in the station with a copy... insistent, almost to the point... it not unreasonable? I say... evidence of benefit, just as there must be evidence of wrong done in a crime... not true? ... found it to be more than doubtful... might as well put it to more direct and better use, no?" 

The sounds of Javert's return drifted in and out of her consciousness as if carried in by gusts of wind: first the clicking of the lock, then the door hinges squeaking, then the sound of the chair legs being dragged and the rustling and flapping of clothes, and finally the quiet but heavy stomp of boots on the dirt floor. And over all these sounds, a strange soliloquy draped itself, a steady stream of excited, low-pitched prattle, which Fantine's mind couldn't quite assemble into sense, but which her ears found very soothing.

"Come on, get up," came the impatient rumble of Javert's voice from somewhere above. "It'll only take a few minutes, and then you can go to sleep."

Wincing, Fantine opened her eyes, which burned and dripped tears as if she's been chopping raw onions. Sliding off the cot, she straightened out and hugged herself tightly around the chest. Despite the heat from the stove, she couldn't stop shivering.

"Nothing new there," she said glibly, surprising even herself.

Javert chortled.

"Still being cute with me, minette? You know I'm not the man to appreciate it."

Fantine raised her head, with full intention to let the unappreciative bastard know her mind about him, his maternal ancestry, and his incestuous relationship thereto, but then her eyes fell on something in Javert's hands and she was distracted.

"On the importance of the Gospel" read Fantine the first words of the title, printed large and bold. There was more to it, two longer lines of words interspersed with some numbers, but the cursive was too small for her to read in the half-dark. The impressive size of the brochure was more appropriate for an government instruction manual than a religious pamphlet. It certainly looked nothing like those trite in-octavo affairs that busy- body bourgeois matrons loved to press upon working girls like herself.

So there's a lesson in it for me too, thought Fantine furiously. And a detailed one, apparently. What a swine. Playing doctor not enough for him. That's really the height and breadth of a swine, coming here with a morality lecture after having me strip to my knickers.

To her surprise, Javert didn't even glance inside the pamphlet, much less attempt to read out loud from it. Instead, he rolled it quickly into a tight tube and began fiddling with the edges, making small, evenly spaced tears and then folding them slightly outward to form a sort of shallow funnel.

Fantine watched his long fingers work away at the pliant paper. Javert pressed the funnelled end of the tube firmly against the back of his right hand; made frustrated faces at it; tinkered with the side that didn't want to stay evenly rolled; measured the diameter of the opening with a tick mark cut into the thumbnail of his right hand; smoothed out the edges with tobacco-stained fingertips.

"It should suffice really," Javert mumbled with oblivious excitement, while his hands shaped the booklet into an instrument. "Not the best stethoscope in the world, obviously. The inner tube is five or six lines in diameter instead of the three-and-half I wanted. But we'll see in minute. I think it'll be enough. I can't believe doctor Morneau left that pompous idiot Bouchard in charge of admissions again at the hospital. You were examined by Bouchard, no? He's the only so-called medical I know that still attempts to diagnose phthisis through pulse-taking. Preserves the dignity of the lady patients! He says. I know we are in the provincial backwaters here, but this is plain ridiculous. He's been hired to preserve the health of his patients, not their dignity."

She did not understand at once, but when she did, her knees almost buckled with the shock.

"You're serious about this, aren't you?" Fantine could barely move her tongue through the cotton in her mouth. "You're not... playing."

Javert's hands stopped moving. Ever so slowly, he raised his head and looked her in the face. His eyes were opaque and reflective, like metal shined to polish. Fantine found herself desperately wishing that he would say something, anything - scream at her for being a stupid whore, promise her more time behind bars - anything but look at her like she just backhanded him across the face.

"If you please..." he finally said, coarsely and quietly, lowering his lashes and motioning for Fantine to uncross her arms.

She complied, clenching the material of her threadbare petticoats with sweating palms. "I'm sorry, I just..." Her teeth were beginning to chatter; her cheeks were burning with fever and throbbing guilt. "I'm so sorry, I just thought..."

"I could care a damn for what you thought!" Javert cut her off vehemently, but Fantine could see that the corners of his mouth were drooping and that his jaw was set.

"Did you study to be a medical then?" she asked quietly and piteously, sounding stupid even to her own ears.

Javert just stared blankly at the fingers moving against the rolled up booklet, as if they did not belong to him.


End file.
